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Tesla Model Y VINs are going out to buyers ahead of imminent nationwide deliveries

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Tesla Model Y VINs are being released to the first batch of production cars ahead of next week’s customer deliveries.

Tesla Model Y buyers in the US, including those in New York, Florida, Georgia, California, and beyond, are finding references to their vehicle’s identification number, otherwise known as a “VIN”, in their vehicle’s online purchase agreement. TMC user johnmodely, on the other hand, was able to find their Model Y VIN after viewing the source code for their Tesla Account page. Teslarati has also confirmed with a Model Y reservation holder in Southern California that a VIN has, in fact, been assigned to their vehicle.

This isn’t the first time we’re hearing of Tesla Model Y VIN numbers being uncovered. Earlier this year, a  batch of Model Y VIN registrations were spotted in the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) database, during which time the Elon Musk-led electric carmaker was preparing for the first production units from its Fremont factory in California. Now, two months later, the first set of Model Y VINs are being shared by their owners on the Tesla Motors Club (TMC) forum, giving a first look at the Model Y configurations being prioritized for delivery.

The discovery also comes days after a trailer full of Model Y was spotted outside of Tesla’s Fremont factory, presumably on their way to delivery centers across the nation. Just yesterday, images of Model Y were uncovered in Tesla’s latest mobile app update, further validating that the company was preparing for the imminent arrival of their first all-electric crossover.

Tesla’s release of Model Y VINs to buyers is part of the final process before a customer takes delivery.

Taking a closer look at the vehicle identification number, we can learn more information about the Model Y including its motor configuration, the year in which the vehicle was produced, and also the location for production.

Tesla Model Y VIN Decoder

All Model S, Model X, Model 3, and Model Y can be identified by the “5YJ” that’s set in the first three characters of the vehicle’s VIN. The three digits represents what’s referred to as the World Manufacturer Identifier (WMI) and uniquely identifies the manufacturer of the vehicle.

  • Digits 1 – 3: World Manufacturing Identifier
    • 5YJ = Manufacturer: Tesla Inc.
  • Digit 4: Make/Line/Series
    • S = Tesla Model S
    • 3 = Tesla Model 3
    • X = Tesla Model X
    • Y = Tesla Model Y
  • Digit 5: Body Type and Gross Vehicle Weight Rating (GVWR)
    • A – Hatch back 5 Dr/ LHD
    • C = Class E (6001-7000 lbs) GVWR / MPV / 5 Dr / LHD
    • E = Sedan 4 Dr / LHD
    • F = Sedan 4 Dr / RHD
    • G = Sport Utility Vehicle (5,001 – 6,000 lb) GVWR /Multi-Purpose Vehicle (MPV)  of 1D: .
  • Digit 6: Restraint System
    • 1= Type 2 manual seatbelts (FR, SR*3) with front airbags, PODS, side inflatable restraints, knee airbags (FR)
    • A = Type 2 manual seatbelts (FR, SR*3, TR*2) with front airbags, PODS, side inflatable restraints, knee airbags (FR)
    • B = Type 2 manual seatbelts (FR, SR*2, TR*2) with front airbags, PODS, side inflatable restraints, knee airbags (FR)
    • D= Type 2 Manual seatbelts (FR, SR*3) with front airbags. PODS, side inflatable restraints, knee airbags (FR)
  • Digit 7: Fuel Type
    • E = Electric
  • Digit 8: Motor/Drive Unit
    • 1= Single Motor – Standard
    • 3= Single Motor – Performance
    • 2 = Dual Motor (Standard)
    • 4 = Dual Motor (Performance)
    • A = Single Motor – Standard
    • B = Dual Motor – Standard
    • F = Dual Motor – Performance
  • Digit 9: Check Digit To be assigned by manufacturer pursuant to 49 CFR § 565.6(c)
  • Digit 10: Model Year
    • C = 2012
    • D = 2013
    • E = 2014
    • F = 2015
    • G = 2016
    • H = 2017
    • J = 2018
    • K = 2019
    • L = 2020
  • Digit 11: Plant of Manufacture
    • F = Fremont, CA
  • Digits 12: Production Series:
    • A = Alpha Prototype
    • B = Beta Prototype
    • R = Release Candidate Vehicle
    • P = Production Vehicle
    • S = Signature Series Vehicle
    • F = Founder Series Vehicle
    • 0-9 = Production Vehicle (replaces P to allow 6 digit sequence numbers)
  • Digits 13-17: Unique serial number

Gene has been obsessed with cars since before he could legally sit in the front seat. Writer, researcher, unofficial CS support, accountant, native suit guy when needed, and overall stick poker. He approaches every story the way he approaches a road trip: with too much enthusiasm, not enough planning, and a surprisingly good outcome. gene@teslarati.com

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Elon Musk

Elon Musk has a crazy prediction about AI in two years

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Daniel Oberhaus, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Elon Musk is, in many respects, one of the biggest and most influential figures in modern-day artificial intelligence.

Given that Tesla, SpaceX, and xAI are all looked at in their respective fields as leaders to an extent, each of them has a heavy influence on the future of AI, even though two of them are not thought of, at face value, as AI companies.

Musk has grand expectations for what is to come with AI, not only as a form of assistance to make human lives easier, but to make humans multiplanetary and solve some of the biggest issues that face us today. But even he is astounded by AI’s pace of progress.

He believes that in two years, AI will be so mind-blowing it might be unrecognizable.

This progress can be seen in a variety of ways, but perhaps the most popular way people have shown AI’s progress, especially on social media, is through an incredibly arbitrary way of watching Will Smith eat spaghetti:

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This is a great way to show people how AI is improving, especially from a perspective that examines how it can manufacture images and video from prompts. AI is an incredibly complex concept, however, and it goes much deeper than Will Smith eating Italian food.

Musk’s most widely adopted method of AI is likely Tesla Full Self-Driving, which impacts millions of people as they utilize it to increase safety with their travel. Musk has routinely pushed incredibly aggressive timelines for self-driving, especially unsupervised.

Perhaps this perspective is why he feels that things will be solved in a timeframe that is much more aggressive than most of us would think. Regardless, the progress of AI is moving fast, and it seems that Musk’s expectations for it could be high.

But if it can actually achieve full-length motion pictures and even more realistic production value, it will be hard to distinguish between reality and AI very soon.

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Tesla just built it 10 millionth car

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Credit: Tesla

Tesla just officially confirmed it has built its 10 millionth car, a major milestone for the company that started producing sustainable electric powertrains less than two decades ago.

In that time, Tesla has truly revolutionized the automotive industry, disrupting the idea of what a car should be, how it should be fueled, and how it truly impacts day-to-day life.

Tesla achieved this feat across four production facilities: the Fremont Factory in Fremont, California, Gigafactory Shanghai in China, Gigafactory Berlin in Germany, and Gigafactory Texas in Austin, Texas.

The 10 millionth vehicle was a Diamond Black Model Y.

Over the course of the past roughly 18 years, Tesla has evolved its lineup from a sporty sedan built on a Lotus body to a lineup of various body styles, performance metrics, and other characteristics that make each one unique.

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This is an incredible achievement for a company that is young compared to what it goes up against. When Tesla entered the automotive market, Ford, GM, and Stellantis widely dominated the playing field. Since then, Tesla has caused such a disruption that these three massive brands had to scramble to create EV projects of their own.

Despite their best efforts, they have not been able to match the prowess or the effectiveness of Tesla. They are all reliant on Tesla’s charging infrastructure, their software is inferior, and their self-driving projects are elementary in comparison.

Tesla felt its fair share of growing pains over the years as well. As recent at 2019, there were complaints about build quality, paint quality, and overall luxuriousness. These things have all been improved upon through the company’s maturity, and these strides in quality have led to this 10 million vehicle production achievement, something that other small-and-scrappy EV makers will hope to accomplish one day.

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SpaceX scores another massive Pentagon deal to support military satellites

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SpaceX just picked up another $1.6 billion from the Pentagon, with the U.S. Space Force awarding two task orders worth $1.6 billion to fly 18 Falcon 9 missions from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California through the end of 2027. The launches will carry satellites for the Space Based Sensing and Targeting portfolio, a set of programs meant to help the military detect and track airborne threats and relay that information across forces in near real time.

The award falls under National Security Space Launch Phase 3 Lane 1, the Space Force’s faster, commercial style procurement track for missions that do not require the military’s most demanding certification process. It is also the largest single order publicly disclosed under that program so far, and the first task order issued since the Space Force nearly tripled Lane 1’s contract ceiling from $5.6 billion to $17 billion on July 17.

SpaceX to become America’s Military data backbone for missiles, drones, and warfighters

Eric Zarybnisky, the Space Force’s acting portfolio acquisition executive for space access, said the entire process, from identifying the requirement to signing the contract, took about two months, including a month set aside for companies to prepare proposals.

SpaceX is not just launching these satellites. It already holds the contracts to build two of the programs within the same portfolio, $4.16 billion for the Space Based Airborne Moving Target Indicator system and $2.29 billion for the Space Data Network Backbone, which Teslarati covered in May. That means SpaceX is now responsible for both building key pieces of the military’s next generation sensing network and getting them into orbit.

With this latest award, SpaceX’s Pentagon contract total for 2026 alone tops $8 billion, adding to a defense portfolio that already includes the Golden Dome missile defense software group SpaceX joined in April and a string of GPS launches it inherited after ULA’s Vulcan rocket ran into a booster anomaly, which we detailed in March.

Lane 1’s vendor pool technically includes seven companies: SpaceX, ULA, Blue Origin, Rocket Lab, Stoke Space, Impulse Space, and Relativity Space. In practice, SpaceX remains the only provider with the combination of launch cadence, flight proven Falcon 9 hardware, and West Coast infrastructure to support a campaign requiring roughly one Vandenberg launch a month for the next year and a half.

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Some lawmakers have flagged the growing concentration of national security launches with one company as a risk worth watching. For now, the Space Force keeps backing SpaceX, with it being the company that shows up ready to launch.

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